Coaching
Reviewed: January 2008
This page has been kept for reference.
It will no longer be updated by ICVET.
Management is getting people to do what needs to be done. Leadership is getting people to want to do what needs to be done. Managers push. Leaders pull. Managers command. Leaders communicate.
Warren Bennis
Workplace Coaching
In today’s fast paced VET environment the coaching model can enhance traditional leadership skills and become a core competence in leading and managing in the modern organisation. By integrating coaching into your management style you can empower others to discover their possibilities through developing capabilities and working more effectively.
The coaching experience can happen as a planned session or be as simple as an unplanned conversation at any time in the working day. You don’t have to be the subject expert to be a coach but you do need to be a good listener, ask the right questions and develop trust in your work relationships whether they are with peers or people who report to you. The command and control styles of management have been replaced with the new role of manager as coach, where employees are empowered to work collaboratively and work together to improve performance and working relationships.
Life Coaching – focuses on the enhancement of life experience through change. It is a solution-focused, results-oriented systematic process in which the coach facilitates the enhancement of a person’s life experience and performance in both personal and professional domains. Life coaching fosters the self-directed learning and personal growth of the person.
Executive Coaching – is defined as a collaborative or individualised relationship between an executive or group of executives and a coach. The aim is to bring about sustained behavioural change and transform the quality of the executive’s professional and personal life. Areas covered may include leadership development, interpersonal communication skills, executive strategic planning, presentation and networking skills.
Mentoring versus Coaching - Although the dynamics have changed somewhat within organisational settings in recent times, traditionally, mentoring has been a hierarchical relationship in which a more senior person has taken on the responsibility of passing on knowledge and skills to a more junior person. The key issue in comparing coaching to mentoring is that mentoring traditionally involves an individual with expertise in a specific domain and the passing on of this expertise to another. Whereas coaching is a process in which the coach facilitates learning and equips people with the tools, knowledge and opportunities to achieve.
- Myth: Coaching is used to fix people and is only for weak performers. Coaching can help to bring the best out in others regardless of their performance level. It helps others develop the capacity to solve problems and work more effectively. The best performers would also benefit from coaching.
- Myth: Coaching is just a way of getting them to do what I want them to do. Coaching allows coaches to develop their own approaches to challenges. Each of us sees the world through our own set of lenses, which may or may not be accurate. Coaching opens up the possibilities and develops the coachee.
- Myth: Coaching is only from the supervisor to the staff member. You may coach people who report to you, but also your peers, your supervisor, your business associates, friends and even family members.
- Myth: Coaching takes a long time. Most coaching sessions are brief and impromptu; they happen in hallways, in the parking lot, or in the warehouse. Some coaching sessions are pre-arranged behind closed doors, but most are not.
Source: Top 10 Myths about Coaching by A J Leighton
Websites
Coaching Psychology Unit, University of Sydney
A good website from the Coaching Psychology Unit at Sydney University which covers a wealth of different types of coaching and has some good resources as well as other links.
Results Coaching Systems
An Australian company that offers life coaching sessions as well as training and support for those wishing to become coaches.
International Coach Federation
International Coach Federation is the recognised body governing coaches. This site has coaching information and referral services.
Publications
HUDSON , F M 1999, The Handbook of Coaching, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Hudson shows how the field of coaching relies on the work from a variety of disciplines. He provides many sources from these disciplines to help aid coaches when working with specific groups or specific problems. Especially useful for newly-trained coaches who might need a deeper understanding of their profession or a good way to avoid reinventing the wheel.
ZEUS, P & Skiffington, S 2000, The Complete Guide to Coaching at Work, McGraw Hill, Sydney.
In this book you are presented professional coaching models, a great range of templates and tips and traps every coach should be alert to.
TALANE, M, Coach yourself to Success , USA.
This book spells out a step by step process of training yourself to be successful. It helps you free up your time, your energy and your life to accomplish what you want and need to do. It teaches how, by making just a few adjustments, your goals come back into focus and you become invigorated to once again reach for the best you can be.